GUWAHATI,
MAY 24.
The Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) today urged the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, to declare special economic packages for the north-eastern States to remove the impression that the region was being neglected.

Assuring the new Prime Minister of all possible help and cooperation, the AGP urged him to ensure "honest implementation" of the Assam Accord, declare the floods and erosion in Assam as a national problem and to find a political solution to the insurgency in the region.

In a letter addressed Dr. Singh, the AGP general secretary, Dilip Kumar Saikia, hoped that being a person fully conversant with the problems of the region, Dr. Singh would leave no stone unturned to solve the long-standing problems faced by the people of Assam and other north-eastern States.

The AGP demanded reservation of jobs for the locals in grade III and grade IV categories in the railways and other Central Government establishments, setting up of oil and agro-based industries to create employment and establishment of institutions of higher education such as the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences, the Indian Institute of Management and the Indian Institute of Sciences in the region on a priority basis.